The great pop battle of 2015 wasn’t really a battle at all, even Justin Bieber knew that. “It’s a friendly competition,” Bieber said in a radio interview shortly after One Direction announced that their fifth studio album, Made in the AM , would arrive on the same day as his redemptive comeback record, Purpose . “I think it was a strategy on their part, ‘cause my release date was first.” Whoever made the call to claim Nov. 13 for One Direction might have assumed that Bieber would flake.

When the boy band announced their album on Sept. 22, 2015, Purpose had only been rumored to be arriving on Friday, November the 13th. Nothing was set in stone as far as the public knew. It didn’t even have a title yet, though Purpose ultimately rolled off the tongue better than Bieber’

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